Shedding light on the conquest and colonization of Algeria, a struggle for history

Abstract

          The conquest of Algeria is a pivotal, capital event in the  Algerian contemporary history. To, know all what surrounds it, can allow us to understand the evolution of this country since 1830, and particularly, how much the conquest and colonization of Algeria was of great toughness.

      For most French people, the words "Algerian War" refer to the bitter fighting between the last French supporters of colonialism and the Algerian independence fighters between 1954 and 1962. But what if the terminology needed to be questioned? What if the timeline needed to be revised ? For Alain Ruscio, a long-standing historian of colonialism, the "Algerian War" was preceded by the First Algerian War, which began at 4 a.m. on June 14, 1830, when the first French soldier set foot on Algerian soil. The French invaders were met by unforeseen resistance, whose emblematic figure was Emir Abd el-Kader. What followed were at least two decades of intense and violent clashes, which not only took their toll on the soldiers, but above all, on the Algerian civilian population, who were displaced, raped and decimated, in the truest sense of the word. "The army, turned merciless by Algeria" as Victor Hugo wrote in 1852. Alain Ruscio analyzes and summarizes the war, as well as the gradual dispossession of Algerian peasants, who were progressively replaced by settlers from all over Europe, some of whom were themselves impoverished wretches, thus substantially updating French historiography on the subject.

The corpus used is varied. First of all, there were speeches pronounced in the French Assembly by some politicians and military personnel amidst the conquest of Algeria ,such as  Bugeaud and Lamartine. Secondly, there had been recourse to some studies like that of Kamel Kateb "Européens"," Indigénes" et  "juifs " en Algérie (1830 - 1962) and that of Alain Ruscio "La premiére guerre d'Algérie. Une histoire de conquete et de resistance."

      As a result of the study, the reader can easily deduce that the conquest of Algeria was of a rare violence and the civil population that was able to escape death,fell again in misery.The colonial policy of violence and imposition of a regime based on the discrimination between the settlers and the Algerians lasted throughout the French presence.

Key words: the conquest, French colonization, repressive policy, Algerian resistance,